Billy

As you’ll know, I made a video for “Jewel Thief” from “To Catch a Thief”, which caused a bit of a fuss and indeed came to Paddy’s attention, as per the little clip below of an interview by a French Journalist, Florian Toussaint:

A little later, there was an abortive “make a video for Billy” competition, so I had a go at doing that, choosing this time a wonderful film, “Laputa” from Studio Ghibli as a basis. Now I’m very attached to Studio Ghibli films: my younger son brought them to my attention, and it was the first time I’d really learned something cultural from him, so I start off a little misty eyed. But the films themselves are incredible: watch them in Japanese with subtitles and you’ll be carried away to touching, funny, and occasionally heartbreakingly sad places. (“Grave of the Fireflies”) is without any doubt the saddest but most wonderful film about war ever made. If you don’t know the films, make it your business to see a few.

So I wanted to do something with a Ghibli film, and Laputa is the one with a trumpet so it was the obvious starting point – as a matter of fact the trumpet appears in the film as it does in the song, unexplained but perfectly placed. At the time I made it I hadn’t seen the film and basically went through looking for images and scenes I could use to match to the words. I was actually happier with the result than I was with Jewel Thief, but unfortunately because Ghibli check uploads to Youtube I wasn’t able to upload it there, it was immediately blocked. I’d claim fair use of the very small number of clips I used to be honest, but no idea if it’ll survive long here.

The curious thing is that I now find the film and the video and the song almost indivisible in my mind.

I could never win the competition with it, for copyright reasons, but I submitted it anyway and I kind of hope Paddy saw it. Who knows?